EBRD lends Kazakhs $200 mln for Silk Road overhaul

ALMATY

ALMATY Jan 9 (Reuters) - The European Bank for
Reconstruction and Development is providing a $196.5 million
loan to Kazakhstan to reconstruct and upgrade a stretch of a
vital ancient road linking Europe and China, the bank said on
Wednesday.

Kazakhstan, the world's largest landlocked country five
times the size of France but populated by just 17 million, is
Central Asia's biggest economy.

It sorely needs modern transport infrastructure to sustain
its fast oil-fuelled growth.

The 62-km (39-mile) part of the road to be modernised
between the southern Kazakh town of Shymkent and the border with
Uzbekistan has a "symbolic and regional meaning", the EBRD said
in a statement.

"For the last three thousand years merchants from Europe to
China travelled through Kazakhstan along the Silk Road. Today,
the country aims to modernise the same routes to improve trade
and regional integration," it quoted Thomas Maier, EBRD managing
director for infrastructure, as saying.

The project is part of the upgrading of the Western Europe -
Western China international transport corridor linking Europe
with China. Once completed, this road will become the shortest
road transport link from the Central Asian countries to Europe,
the EBRD said.

The whole corridor project is being financed by several
international financial institutions which also include the
World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and the Islamic
Development Bank.

Since the beginning of operations in Kazakhstan, the EBRD
has invested $5.9 billion in 158 projects in the country, the
bank said.
(Reporting by Dmitry Solovyov)